Children in West Sussex are heading back to school
It marks the first stage of the easing of coronavirus restrictions.
Last updated 8th Mar 2021
Children and young people across West Sussex are getting back to school and college from today.
For some it's the first time classrooms have been open since Christmas.
It marks the start of the first stage of the easing of coronavirus restrictions.
As well as the school return, care home residents can have one regular visitor from today, and people can meet someone from another household outside.
Nick Gibb, the Schools Minister and MP for Bognor and Littlehampton, said the reopening marked an important step in the plans to bring England out of its third coronavirus lockdown.
"We always wanted to ensure that schools were the last thing we closed and the first thing we opened.
"I think it's right for the children, it's right for the mental health of children to be with their friends at school, and it's right for their education.
"We'll monitor the position over the next five weeks, from April 12th onwards, but I'm delighted and I'm sure there are millions of parents up and down the country who are equally delighted, and I know there are millions of pupils who just can't wait to be with their friends."
Ollie Godden, a mathematics teacher at the independent Conifers day school in Midhurst, told Greatest Hits Radio that having in-person lessons for the first time in nine weeks would be a big boost to the morale of both students and staff.
"No staff enters the profession to be teaching from their bedrooms or from their front offices, so we're, as a staff body, really delighted to get back with the children and as a team as well.
"You never can predict how students or how people have reacted to the lockdown, so giving them that sense of security and a sense of normality, I suppose - we've got this phrase, the 'new normal' but we want that old normal back, of being in school and being together because we know that we can provide an environment that's secure for them and ready for them."
Boris Johnson said he hoped Monday’s tentative softening of restrictions marked a “big step” on his “road map to freedom” – a plan which could see all Covid measures lifted by June 21st.
Mr Johnson, asked on Sunday about the risks involved with reopening more than 20,000 schools, echoed the warnings of education experts that more damage was being done to pupils by keeping them at home than having them return to in-person lessons.
“I think the risk is actually in not going back to school tomorrow given all the suffering, all the loss of learning we have seen,” he said on a visit to a north London vaccination centre.
It comes after Amanda Spielman, England’s chief schools inspector, expressed concern about eating disorders and self-harming among children after she said pupils endured “boredom, loneliness, misery and anxiety” during England’s third lockdown.
How will students catch up?
Education Secretary Gavin Williamson said he was looking at proposals that included a five-term academic year, a shorter summer holiday and longer school days to help pupils catch up on lost learning during the pandemic in “transformative” measures not seen since the Second World War.
Labour is calling for catch-up breakfast clubs before the school day starts, with leader Sir Keir Starmer and his shadow education secretary Kate Green due to argue during a visit to a school in east London on Monday that the concept would allow for both extra socialising and learning.
The party said its analysis of Government data suggested children have each lost an average of 109 face-to-face school days since the first lockdown in March 2020.
Testing
Secondary school pupils, who are likely to have their return staggered over the week to allow for mass testing, are being asked to take three voluntary Covid-19 tests on site and one at home over the first fortnight. They will then be sent home-testing kits to do twice-weekly.
The Department for Education (DfE) is also advising secondary school students to wear face coverings wherever social distancing cannot be maintained, including in the classroom.
But primary school children are not being asked to carry out Covid-19 tests or wear face masks on their return.